Editorial:
Taking
Freedom
in
Vain
12/21/01
David Borden, Executive Director, [email protected], 12/21/01 "Protecting our freedom" has been the government's rallying cry since the vicious attacks of September 11th drove our nation into a war against perpetrators of terrorist violence. The term has some justification: Though the terrorists' hatred was probably not motivated by America's civil liberties or democratic system of government, violence is itself a form of tyranny; the victims of the attacks saw their freedom taken away in the most drastic way, the loss of their very lives. Yet freedom is about more than protection from criminality. Freedom in a deeper sense requires the restraining of the heavy hand of government power. In this constitutional sense of the word, freedom is very much at threat during times of crisis, but from within, not without. The impulse for a society to sacrifice fundamental liberties and elements of legal due process for the sake of public safety is strong, as is the tendency to accept that whatever such curtailments our leaders ask for in the name of safety will truly provide it. In fact, civil liberties have been under an extraordinary assault since September 11th, and in ways that have no legitimate connection to fighting terrorism. The so-called Patriot Act, for example, defines some very minor crimes, such as low-level computer hacking or certain types of vandalism, as "terrorism" -- a devaluation of the term that ought to offend any victim of actual terrorism. Worse, some legitimate political or philanthropic activity potentially falls under Patriot's broad net. One example that has been cited is that of a conflict resolution program seeking to prevent violence and foster peaceful negotiations in a nation torn by civil conflict; sending their materials to the insurgent group -- which has rightly or wrongly been placed on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations -- could be interpreted as "assisting terrorism" -- even though the purpose of sending the materials is to prevent terrorism or other political violence. DRCNet is considering holding an anti-prohibition conference somewhere in Latin America next year or the following. Suppose that representatives of Colombia's FARC rebel organization happen to show up. Will that implicate DRCNet in terrorism? Possibly, the way the law was written. Disturbingly, Attorney General John Ashcroft has gone so far as to blast civil libertarians for criticizing some of these so-called anti-terrorism policies. Ashcroft charged that critics are effectively supporting terrorists by diluting public support for the government's war against terrorism. Yet how can, and why should, defenders of freedom stand by while the Ashcrofts of the world gut our civil liberties for no good reason? The drug war has shown us that freedom can easily become abridged even in the absence of a crisis. Here in the nation's capital, for example, medical marijuana advocates have had to sue the government to obtain the right to place an initiative on the ballot. Congress passed a law forbidding the District of Columbia's local government from expending funds on any ballot measure that would reduce marijuana penalties -- even though they would be welcome to vote to increase them -- a clear violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to "free exercise" of speech and to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Even though Congress has the power to overturn acts of the DC government, the law is still a violation of the First Amendment, because it seeks a priori to ban a vote based on a political viewpoint on its outcome. Congress may have the legal right to block medical marijuana in the capital. But if the people who vote in the capital choose medical marijuana, then a Congress intent on preventing that should have to specifically vote to stop it, and under undergo the public embarrassment of overturning a vote of the people that passed overwhelmingly, on an issue of compassion where their own constituents around the country agree with DC. Nothing could be further from a crisis situation than the placement or attempted placement of a medical marijuana initiative on the ballot. But that didn't stop drug war extremist Bob Barr (R-GA) from proffering his blatantly anti-democratic legislation. Yet Barr doesn't deserve all the blame. Any member of Congress who voted for the Barr amendment is guilty of violating his or her oath to uphold the US Constitution; and any member who failed to stand up for the Constitution in this case also bears some responsibility. "Freedom" is an easy word to say. But it's harder to live by, especially in times of crisis, but even when the threat is merely to an ideology or doctrine. Bob Barr might truly have seen DC's medical marijuana initiative as a crisis, but the threat was only to his warped and Neanderthal worldview, not to any person's safety. Barr in fact became the threat: an ideological threat to our freedom and democracy, by ignoring democracy's tenets; and a real-world health and safety threat to patients who need marijuana for medical reasons. Let us resist those who speak the word "freedom" in vain but fail to respect freedom in their actions.
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